


"Do you know what your sin is?" or Seven Targets in Search of an Assassin

by MrProphet



Category: Serenity (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 23:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10707084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	1. The Colonel

Do you know what your sin is?

Pride? No, although you are certainly not a woman of great humility. A humble woman would never be able to raise her own army, let alone lead a successful campaign to root out a nest of Reavers; a most impressive feat I may say, as there is little risk of my making a lasting contribution to your undeniable elephantiasis of the ego.

But it is not your pride that is the issue here. You were chosen for your pride, Colonel; you were chosen for that very strength. Unfortunately, there was something that those who chose you did not count on. They chose you to destroy the threat of the Reavers, but did not realise that you might become as great a danger yourself.

It might well have been foreseen. Private armies are useful for many reasons, but they are also a liability, especially in the hands of someone consumed by a bloodthirsty religious mania. Your desire to continue your crusade is admirable, your methods are unacceptable. Forced conscription of colonial populations, raids against Alliance military camps, the massacre of whole populations, ostensibly to prevent their decimation by the Reavers; these are… unacceptable.

Your mission has become an obsession, Colonel. Your  _wrath_  can not be contained by any means short of the ultimate sanction.

It falls to me to end this horror.


	2. The Minister

Do you know what your sin is?

Of course you do. You make little secret of it, after all, which is more or less the problem. Your  _lust_  has gone from being a little matter of back page gossip to a major embarrassment for the whole Alliance. Every year Parliament pushes through more and more legislation for the protection of the young and you continue your depredations as though the law did not apply to you. The simple fact is that the Alliance is no longer willing to make excuses for a minister of state who can not control his less savoury appetites.

Sticks and stones, Minister. Yes, I am a killer, but then I have never claimed to be a good man, nor presumed to tell others how to live their lives.

No; I make no judgement on your actions. That is not my place. I simply enact the will of those better placed to make such a decision.

There was a king on Earth-that-was who was accused of committing acts of perversion – although his sins, unlike your own, were nothing that would turn a hair in our society – and assassinated. Some say that he was put to death in a most brutal manner, which his killers no doubt deemed… ironic.

Rest assured that yours is at least a better death than that.


	3. The Administrator

Do you know what your sin is?

You have been a trusted man, and yet you have betrayed that trust. In order to spread the influence and advantages of the Alliance to the outer settlements, there is a process of expansion, construction and development that must proceed at a regular pace. Plans are laid at high levels; a logistical chain reaction is set in motion and it must not been interrupted or the system begins to fall into chaos. Deliveries arrive with no receiving station to receive them; personnel and materiel arrive to work, only to sit idle with nothing to do but consume resources; progress halts and people suffer.

Of course there are always those willing to protest that such plans suffer from their own top-heavy organisation, but that is precisely what an Administrative Overseer is assigned to avoid.

The failure of the expansion plan in this part of the system has cost the Alliance millions of credits and billions of hours of working time. That is considerably more than a small failing. Moreover, it is a failing which has resulted not from unforeseen difficulties or local resistance, but from your own reluctance to act. You have repeatedly delegated important tasks to unqualified subordinates rather than attend to them yourself. They failed in these, but they will not be punished. It was your  _sloth_  that caused the problems.

Be glad, Overseer. Your greatest wish seems to have been a quiet life. Now you will have all the quiet you can stand. For you, the rest is silence.


	4. The Treasurer

Do you know what your sin is? It’s  _greed_.

Now that is a classic mistake; an excessive desire for food and drink is not greed, but gluttony. Greed, or avarice if you prefer, is the desire for material things. Love of money, which was once called the root of all evil. They knew a thing or two in those days, Treasurer.

You are one of the fifty wealthiest men in the Alliance and yet that does not seem to have been enough for you. Over the last ten years you have systematically removed billions of credits from a variety of public funds and paid them into your own accounts. This alone would be more than the Government could be expected to tolerate, but we also know that to increase your already vast personal fortune you have channelled that money into ventures both legal and illegal.

You have funded organised crime syndicates and manipulated public spending to benefit your own friends instead of the population at large.

You are a menace and a burden that must be removed, but you are also an embarrassment to be expunged. If word were to get out that an Alliance Treasurer had done even half of the things that you have done, public confidence would be shattered. That is why your death will look like an accident; a tragic fire. Uncommon in this day and age, but not unheard of.

Yes; I am afraid that for the sake of verisimilitude, there  _will_  have to be other casualties. Your wife and children will not escape the fire.

You are right to call me a monster, but do not let that blind you to the truth. What I do now is as much your fault as mine, Treasurer.

Farewell.


	5. The Pirate

Do you know what your sin is?

Yes, I know you’ve pretty much run the gamut of greed, anger and pride, and to judge by this table, gluttony as well.  
Oh, and lust as well? You have been a busy man, haven’t you? I suppose that the one thing we can not accuse you of is sloth.

But it is your  _envy_  that rules you; your envy that drives you to take what belongs to others and to kill those who have what you do not. All thieves are envious, but you take it to extremes and somehow it has driven you so hard that you have achieved things that many would consider  _impossible_  just to seize some little thing that you wanted. You are almost as feared as the Reavers, if with little cause, simply because you  _never_  stop.

One of these days your luck, or your drive, would have run out. Perhaps you should be grateful to me for giving you the chance to die at home.


	6. The Governor

Do you know what your sin is?

Well, I would imagine that most people would find it easy enough to work out. It is difficult not to notice the outward signs of your  _gluttony_.

What do you weigh now? Three hundred pounds? Three-fifty? And what is the average weight of an adult female on your colony? One-hundred? Ninety? It’s obscene that they should be so starved and you so bloated on what you have stolen.

You wish to make amends for your crimes? For the food you have appropriated to sate your appetites while those in your care starved? Well you shall have your wish.

Your body shall be thrown into the recycling plant when you are dead and so you  _shall_  feed your people. Your death shall be the most selfless act of your life. 


	7. The Traitor

Do you know what your sin is?

For a gangster such as you, even the lives of a dozen Alliance Security agents is not too great a price for your capture. Your greed is boundless, your depredations have been a cause of suffering across a dozen planets and moods. You had to be stopped.

But it is not my place to punish your sins. The good police chief here has come for that purpose. I am here for another reason.

Several of the agents sent after you lost the trail completely. Three were unmasked and killed, others died trying to bind you over by law; many were betrayed from their own side. Treachery is a terrible crime; the worst, according to many.

And why were they betrayed? Because in your early days as a petty criminal, a policeman gave you a second chance; an act of mercy that  _you_  betrayed. When you became public enemy number one, that policeman devoted himself to your capture. He pursued you doggedly for months until at last… he learned that the case was to be handled by AlSec.

His  _pride_  could not bear that, and so he sabotaged the investigation until he could make the arrest himself, is that not so Chief?

And that is why you must die, Chief. Rest assured that your reputation will be preserved.

And no; you will not tell the story in court. You will remain silent. As silent as the grave.


End file.
